Ellen's father was
unfavourable to her marriage at first, it will be easily imagined that
he never now acknowledged them. His young family, therefore, had
nothing to depend upon except their father's exertions, and they were
about to be closed for ever.

The time arrived when it was impossible for William to be suffered any
longer to remain in his charge. He was thrust out of his church, and
expelled from the ministry. The messenger who delivered this message
to him, delivered it to one more dead than alive. His excesses had at
length brought on a fit of apoplexy; he was but partially recovered
from it, and could only, in a dim manner, comprehend the purport of
the message, when, with his wife and children, he was removed from the
manse. A friend sheltered him for a time--afterwards he was conveyed
over to Edinburgh. Within a twelvemonth he died, having been chained
down to bed by his disease, one-half of his frame being dead, with
mind enough to see poverty and inevitable misery ready to crush his
helpless family, but without the power to use the slightest exertion
in order to avert the impending calamity. It was in a garret in the
High Street, upon rotten straw, the spectacle of an emaciated and
shattered wife before his eyes, and the cries of his starving children
sounding in his ears, that William Riddell breathed his last! What
availed it then that he had been good and pure, full of generous
sentiments, endowed with a graceful person, a noble genius, and a
manly eloquence? These otherwise invaluable qualities had been all
sunk or scattered by the spendthrift extravagances of the Social Man.

It is now about five years ago, since, as we were hurrying past
Cassels Place, at the foot of Leith Walk, we were attracted by a crowd
who had gathered round a poor intoxicated woman. She had fallen
beneath the wheel of a waggon, and both her legs were crushed in a
terrible manner. As two or three assistants carried her past a
gas-light towards the nearest house, we were struck by the
resemblance--hideous, indeed, and bloated--which her features wore to
some one whom we had known. We inquired her history, and, to our
horror, discovered that this was indeed Ellen Ogilvie--the widow of
our poor friend, William Riddell. It was useless attempting to save
her; her vital energies were sinking rapidly beneath the injuries
which she had received. She revived a little from the effect of some
wine which we gave her, and began incoheren